Server side feed reader and publisher reBlog makes keeping up with a ton of feeds a snap. I was using Bloglines to track a couple hundred feeds, but when I saw a demo of reBlog 2.0 at ETech I knew this was the RSS reader for me. Here's a step-by-step tutorial on how to install and use reBlog on your own PHP/MySQL server, along with a video demo of how I use reBlog as my own reader.

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Background

Since I work on several different computers, a web-based feed reader is essential to me. For the past two years I've been using Bloglines to keep up with feeds, but I noticed I was wasting an hour or two each day reading my feeds there and re-checking whenever I was bored or had downtime. ReBlog is a more efficient web-based reader that gets me through my feeds faster than Bloglines.

The Install

You'll need a web server with PHP and access to your own MySQL database to install reBlog. While you could probably install it locally in Windows or OSX, I installed reBlog in a directory off my personal site, so I could access it from anywhere, at any time. Note: the application comes with install instructions, which I've boiled down to the essentials.

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2. Edit the file named config.php. You'll need to put in your MySQL information (in the format of mysql://username:password@localhost/your-database). I would suggest also adding a username and password under REBLOG_HTTPAUTH_NAME, and REBLOG_HTTPAUTH_PASS, so you can keep your reBlog installation private. Pretty much everything else can be left at defaults.

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3. Upload to a new directory on your web server (mine is at example.com/refeed/)

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4. Create a directory within your reBlog installation, named "cache". Set the rights to world writeable (type: chmod 777 cache).

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This image was lost some time after publication.

This image was lost some time after publication.

5. If everything was set up correctly, open the page "install.php" at the web address where you installed reBlog (example.com/refeed/install.php). You should see a list of database tables being created and a success message when complete.

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6. The last part, and possibly the most difficult is setting up an hourly update of your reBlog install. You'll want to have update-quiet.php (where you installed it, example.com/refeed/update-quiet.php) loaded once an hour, and the reblog instructions (at /refeed/INSTALL.html in the zip file) contain the crontab code to do this.

7. Log into reBlog and start using it.

Adding Feeds

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The best way to get a bunch of feeds into reBlog is to export your existing list as an OPML file from your existing feed reader. For me using Bloglines, that means loading up http://www.bloglines.com/export while logged in, and saving that as a file. Once in reBlog, just hit the Add Feeds top header link and you can upload your OPML file. If you have a lot of feeds, it can take a while to process, so be patient. If you have already read your feeds, you can tell reBlog to automatically archive them the first time, so that everything doesn't show up as new and unread.

There is also a handy javascript bookmarklet for adding feeds. Basically, whenever you hit a rss.xml file online, you just hit the bookmarklet to automatically insert the address on your Add Feeds page, making additions to reBlog fairly easy.

Using reBlog

Now that you have it installed, it's time to use reBlog. If you added a bunch of feeds, you might see them as all unread. You'll see the Feed List when you first load up reBlog, but the Item List is where you can read all your feeds at once.

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The Item List lets you Archive and Publish feed items. Think of reBlog like an email client: Archive means to mark as read and hide when you refresh your Item List, while Publish copies items into your own feed. I love the keyboard navigation in reBlog, which lets you quickly scan the Item List and Publish the things you want to save, while setting the rest to Archive.

Once you are done scanning the Item List, you can hit "A" to archive the entire page and move onto the next page in your Item List (if there is one). You can also review your Published Feed page when complete.

Like I said, I use reBlog like email. I track about 200 feeds and often read through 50-100 items at a time in the morning, at night, and once or twice during the day. I use the Publish feature to save the items I want to read in depth and remember, while I scan the rest. If you saw a link I posted to the GTD approach to RSS, it's similar to that method. I browse a lot of feeds, save a few, then Archive and close my Items List to read my Published Feed.

Using reBlog, I've cut the time I used to take reading feeds at Bloglines in half. I love the keyboard navigation and find it very fast and handy for browsing lots of information. The use of AJAX in reBlog is just right, letting me stay within a single page while performing several background tasks at once.

Demo Video

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Here is a video of me using the application to go through an update. It's about two minutes long and I describe what I'm seeing and how I'm moving around within the app. You don't have to archive items one-by-one (you can do the entire page at once with a single keystroke), but I tend to do it on every item so I don't have to scroll the page to read everything.

Two stages to fast feed reading: skimming and reading

So how do I save more time with reBlog? I think it has to do with reBlog letting me split my task of feed reading into skimming and reading in-depth on two separate pages. I can churn through 150 new items each morning in a few minutes and pluck out the 10-15 best ones to look at when I'm done skimming. Once I jump to the Published Feed, I can forget about the other 90% of items that weren't interesting and focus my attention on the few that were.

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With tools like Bloglines or Google's RSS Reader, you only get one interface, one view to both skim items and read them in-depth. If you read items one feed at a time in Bloglines, once you click away, they're gone and have to be pulled up from the archive, so my morning review of feeds would take almost an hour as I skimmed a while, stopped, then had to read each piece before moving on to more skimming.

Demo reBlog before installing

The reBlog group at Eyebeam is current experimenting with hosted reBlogs using Drupal. You can sign up for an account and use the beta service at my.reblog.org. It is a beta demo server that could go away at any time, so if you like the functionality, your best bet is to set it up on your own server.

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Republishing reBlog feeds

The reBlog software was designed for skimming hundreds of feeds and reposting the best items to a public site, though I've focused mainly on the feed reading aspects of the tool. If you are interested in reposting your favorite items, they offer Wordpress and Movable Type plugins to automatically post published items to your blog. If you want to see what I've been saving for later, here's my feed of published items. I might even start directing that output to my Movable Type blog in the future.